Just got back from a run on the beach with Betty. The surf was knocked way down from yesterday thanks to strong offshore winds.

As I noted in Betty's prior post, I went out for a surf during the snowstorm yesterday and frankly it was cold.

That's not usually the case in early January at the Jersey Shore. Water temperatures lag far behind air temperatures, and it's not uncommon to begin January with the sort of water temps you might get in May - 50 degrees or so. That ain't bad for a Jersey winter.

Yesterday, however, the water felt like it was already in the low 40s. It felt cold because of that and also because I'd run into my neighbor Larry at the supermarket the evening before and he told me about his new wetsuit that was heated by battery power.

A couple years back the Australian company Rip Curl came up with the H-Bomb wetsuit, which has a small battery that powers a heating coil built into the suit.

As you can see from the video below, the H-bomb is the bomb.

Unfortunately it costs a thousand bucks. For that kind of dough I could spend a month somewhere warm.

But then Larry mentioned that another Aussie company, Quiksilver, had come up with a heated vest you could wear under your suit.

Much better idea, I'd say. Every suit wears out after a while and replacing a thousand-dollar suit is out of the question for all but the richest guys. And those guys, as I noted, can take trips to warm places.

Just thinking about not having the thing made me colder as I sat in the ocean groveling for waves.

So on Sunday I headed to one of my local surf shops and bought something for once. Usually I just hang around, look at the boards and b.s. with the salesmen. That's what a lot of surfers do, but the shop doesn't make any money off of that. So I feel guilty for wasting their time.

But this time I bought the vest, the Quiksilver Cypher. I took it home, charged the battery and took it out for a run on the beach with Betty.

That's not as good as a surf, but the waves weren't good. And during the entire run the vest kept pumping heat to the small of my back. I could imagine the effect that would have in the water. Most of a surf session is spent sitting still waiting for waves to come. You don't generate any heat sitting still, so a tiny bit would go a long way.

I was encouraged.

On the other hand, this sort of thing could become addictive. I've been surfing consistently though Jersey winters since the late 1970s, which is when the first hooded wetsuits came out. There's a certain Spartan ethic that goes with that sort of thing.

I recall a morning in the early 1980s when I went to check the Seaside pier at dawn on a winter's day when the air temps were about 10 degrees and the water temp about freezing. The waves were four feet and perfect.

I figured I'd do something totally crazy and go home and get my board.

By the time I paddled out, there were five guys in the lineup.

Now that was hard core.

So it seems a bit wimpy on a certain level to have a heated vest.

But most surfers all over the world wouldn't even think of going out in that water. So I have to say that this seems like the first useful innovation in winter surfing for some time.